...rescue plz --- labor union disaster -- how to find help

Private emails welcome.  Send to:
  
  wildfire0240 (AT) hotmail.com  

     --note the four digit number 
      attached to the equestrian word 
      "wildfire" is zero-two-four-zero.

How to find help.  Is this an art?  Selfless
rescuer(s) exist ; my rescue, help me find, 
and soon.  I'm in Connecticut; am polite, 
decorus, talented, but debased & abandonned.
>From the lowest world one ought to be able to 
rise.  But the low world has too hurt me.  It 
is the bottom of institutional quality, rife 
with seedy officialdom. You mightn't believe 
intended victimization of the vulnerable goes 
on.  It does.  Accredited homeless world 
'helpers' directly caused three postponements 
of my hearings re unemployment benefits.  I 
never should have been here.  I've burnt a 
trail such that others should not be as 
victimized as I have been.  The only people who 
have not hurt me are the criminals: do they 
await their turn or have some primal dignity 
about real Ciderellas?

Monday night I slept at Dunkin Donnuts on 
Orange Avenue in New Haven.  The staff there
--a West African especially-- were gracious in 
allowing me to sleep for hours, head on table, 
against ordinary company policy.  

Once thrown so low, only high help can save.  
Where is it?  

I need an abode, somewhere transitionally
to stay that is calm, sure, a respite from 
my long course of existential awakening.  
Universities ought not sponsor cruelty; labor 
unions should help, at least not harm; physicians 
do harm, vapidly, fatly.  

I sent my plea for help to CWEALF 
(pronounced QUELL-FFFFF).  That is the 
Connecticut Women's Education and 
Legal Fund (email: cwealf (AT) cwealf.org).  
No reply yet, however.  Here's what 
I said: 

  "Need help with exotic unemployment benefits
   disaster (see below) that resulted in homelessness,
   which homelessness has in itself become a
   counterproductive experience.  I need a lawyer 
   immediately & any personal help (kindness)."

Getting my car back is important, urgent 
right now.  A place called Wheelers Auto 
(203-288-3329) located on State St in Hamden, 
Connecticut has it.  Call them; ask them to release 
the car back to me for free, as a civic gesture, 
because social, legal, moral mishap is why they 
obtained my car in the first place.

Hamden's town attorney is named Susan
Guen (email: sgruen (AT) hamden.org).  She
has all of my possessions taken at the same time
as my car, everything I need to begin restoring 
my livelihood.  She wants to auction my things off.  
This must not happen.  Call her.  She knows the 
circumstances underwhich my dispossession occurred 
and that socially relevant depravity was involved.

My union should not be silent. I should
and want to get my job back. Wrong info
about UCB led to such suffering.

http://www.hereunion.org/   

Call them or write them.  The significant 
officers are:

      w.p.heyman (AT) att.net
      here.newhaven (AT) snet.net
      sm217here (AT) yahoo.com


My plight should not have happenedl.  That 
it has happened is partly because I was 
acculturated in Canada, where the medical & 
unemployment benefits systems are rational.  

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ran Calling)
Newsgroups: alt.society.labor-unions,
law.school.legal-prof,law.school.clinic.info-law,
uk.legal, misc.legal
Subject: ....Rescue from a labor union disaster
>
> Rapidly, I  must understand how and 
> why my union disaster has happened.
>

This is my life's only experience with
a labor union & has been a grim
one.

What other cases are there where 
employers, particularly sophisticated 
employers, such as universities, have...

1. aggressively placed a worker on 
leave, where the leave period would last 
weeks & required a doctors note authorizing 
return to work (mental stress issues only) 

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Lest this read prejudicially, 
some clarification.  The leave period 
was imposed not because of conduct, 
but because of an email I wrote (not 
written at work or for work or to work
- an academic email, not personal - some 
confidential medical info, but nothing 
contagious or transmissible - a request, 
actually, for referral to specialized 
counseling, which, unfortunately, I never 
got & still need, if anyone can help 
there).  

Victimization, a terror of error, beset my 
leave period from the first.  Days late, I 
finally learned I was on leave, not in a phone 
call, but in a planned, on-campus, after dark 
ambush in a parking lot, a drama straight 
from the lore of security officer expertise in 
detaining, containing, & serving notice 
on derelict members of the public who 
are disruptive, ultimately becoming 
barred from campus. 

Quickly enough, the security officers
who were ordered to ambush me 
realized how shocked I was, that their 
plan to trap a beast had bagged them a 
stunned, humiliated human being.  But the 
harm was done.  The appearance of aggression 
& prejudice was complete.   The depth of 
error that led to a plan of ambush rather 
than simple phone call was frightening, 
appalling.    
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2. from the start, concealed from the 
distressed worker the role that unemployment 
compensation benefits (UCB) should play in 
providing income replacement during the initial 
weeks of a leave period


3. in turn, aggressively hurt the worker all 
over again in trying to stop the worker's labor 
union from becoming involved in the employers 
evolving mismanagement of expectations of 
the worker incident to the leave 


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The Union became involved after 
the initiating mistake of a dark night, 
parking lot ambush turned into almost
4 weeks of additional disruption of my 
private life by the employer who began
defensive backpeddling without clarification 
of what I was to tell any doctor.  I was not 
required to go to a psychiatrist, but to 
any doctor.  The uni wanted me to go 
to my own doctors, but I was too 
embarrassed & harmed to wish to involve 
them.  At 4 weeks of no-pay, the style 
& level of invasion wrought by the uni 
in its attempt to block the filing of 
a grievance (which I hoped would end the 
chaos) was grand & shocking as the 
original ambush & very harmful. 
 
This was my introduction to univeristy 
"human resources" departments (my actual
job wasn't involved), to labor unions, to 
grievance processess.  The grievance meeting 
was held 7 weeks after the original parking 
lot ambush.  In the grievance agreement, the 
uni said it would pay one week of my 7 
weeks of lost wages.  At that point, at the
latest, I should have been instructed to file 
a claim for UCB, though better it had been
filed immediately after the on-campus 
ambush fiasco.   
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4. then continued to conceal from the 
worker (and now union too) the role that 
unemployment compensation benefits (UCB)
should play in providing financial support 
while grievance proceeding requirements are 
ongoing, and without which financial support, 
as it turns out, two things will happen: 

    a. the grievance proceeding is 
        defeated (and the union should feel 
        embarrassed, if not culpable, for its 
        role, and the worker feel punished for 
        having invoked the union over 
        the employers aggressive disdain)

    b. subsequent additional requirements 
        that the employer imposes on the worker 
        after reneging on the initial grievance 
        agreement can never be completed by 
        the worker (morally) due to severe
        mismanagement and mounting financial 
        distress.


Its got to be a rarity --or is it?-- that a labour 
union would be wrong in its information 
about unemployment compensation benefits (UCB).  
But is the employer allowed to continue to conceal 
from the worker (and union) correct information 
about UCB after the employer knows that the union 
has failed to address UCB eligibility during a 
grievance meeting held weeks after the worker 
became unpaid and with the worker seeming 
unaware that a "pink slip" should be requested?

An employer's incentive to renege on an initial 
grievance agreement may be heightened when 
a union is misinformed about UCB (resulting in 
no claim for UCB benefits being filed after the 
grievance meeting).  As I have recently learned, 
employers in USA have a financial interest in 
avoiding UCB claims, and therefore in concealing 
info about a workers qualification to file. Here is 
a random example of a university's stance: 

   "The University is a "covered employer" under the 
   Unemployment Compensation Act. This means that 
   the University is required to pay unemployment 
   compensation to former employees who are determined 
   by the Unemployment Agency (UA) to be eligible for 
   benefits. The University does not wish to deny benefits 
   to individuals who are out of work through no fault of
   their own. However, the University does wish to minimize 
   costs, whenever legally appropriate, by submitting 
   accurate and complete information to the UA."


Can the university-employer, knowing that 
misinformation about UCB is afloat, lengthen 
a period of unpaid leave by subsequently 
reneging on the initial grievance agreement,
and still be legitimate in its continuing 
concealment of UCB rights?

After I had provided the agreed doctor note from 
my own doctor okaying me back to work.  My 
employer reneged on the grievance agreement by 
requiring many additional weeks of unpaid, severely 
mismanaged interaction with the employers 
"occupational health" practitioners, in something 
called a "fitness for duty" process.  If "occupational 
health" practitioners first see a worker after, say, 
10 weeks of unpaid leave, and know the worker is 
under by then harming financial distress, can the 
practitioners be permitted to have wrong 
information about UCB too (thereby worsening the 
workers financial distress) and still ethically 
proceed to "treat" the worker?  

Could "occupational health" physicians, if they 
did have correct information about the role of 
UCB in relation to non-quitting, non-fired workers
placed on unpaid leave, nevertheless covertly 
join with an employer, for whom they are 
agents, in concealing correct info about UCB? 

My union later tried to force me to see other 
doctors.  In retrospect I am glad I did not do 
that, for the real problem was failure of UCB 
benefits awareness.  That failure could have 
been repaired at any moment during all the 
months that the grievance process dragged 
on.  It was never repaired.  While I was 
unaware of that specific dimension of my 
quandary, I knew things smelled bad. 

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The original requirement was merely that
any physician okay me back to work.  After
10 weeks of no pay, the employer's 
"occupational health" specialist thought I 
should have a psychiatric evaluation.  This 
was ludicrous in view of the failure of UCB
awareness.  The visit with a psychiatrist 
then occurred after 15 weeks of no pay & went 
badly (for one, it was to be an "independent" 
evaluation but the employer called & spoke 
with the psychiatrist on the morning of the 
visit, instructing him differently than the 
referring "occupational health" doctor
had done --that never could have happened
in Canada). That and a few other unusualities 
were negating and I did not go on with it. 
My labor union wanted me to see a different 
psychiatrist afterward to counter or complete 
the process, which seemed to me anti-medical, 
professionally improper, given the increasing
financial distress.  On the face of it, a labor 
union becomes involved after 4 weeks of no pay; 
any doctor is saying I should have a psychiatric 
evaluation after 15 week of no pay; and now the 
union is saying go further in that direction, to 
a different psychiatrist, which appointment 
might have occurred at the soonest after 18 
weeks of no pay; I felt like a slave; all 
the while wrong or concealed info about UCB
was espoused by everyone involved.
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This raises a general ethical question.  In the 
general realm of physicianship, would any doctor be 
ethically allowed to "treat" a patient for stress 
surrounding collapse of life due to misinformation 
about UCB, without first correcting the misinformation
about UCB? You might be surprised how many USA
doctors will vacantly take pay for that absurdity.  

In the scenario I present, please suggest what the 
informal feeling might be about who is blameworthy 
for the lengthy era of harm to the worker?  Is the 
worker the dolt for not knowing how to get correct 
info about UCB & for stupidly relying on an ignorant 
union & physicians, and therefore deserves the ensuing 
months of financial distress resulting in huge 
moral quandaries and eventual loss of the job? Is the 
labor union, which is positively misinformed about UCB,
at fault for trying sternly, constantly, but futilely 
to *help* a worker without first addressing harm to 
workers life that UCB was designed to prevent? 
What of the role of physicians?  These are state licensed 
professionals.  Can doctors be trusted to diagnose the
stress of financial plight as needing a cure other 
than that of preliminary correction of misinfo about 
filing a proper UCB claim to relieve the financial 
stress?  Or are employers --the ones, I think, who 
are definitely legally obliged to know & convey info 
about UCB to workers-- the wrongful ones for sending 
to innocent, ignorant "occupational health" doctors 
patients in financial distress caused by lack of 
UCB awareness? 

My plight is far more serious now than it was after 
freaky (I would say depraved) institutional mishaps that 
are apparently common in the homeless world of New 
Haven and which have deeply exhausted me and caused 
three postponements in my earlier scheduled hearings 
about belated eligibility for UCB.

Besides needing again quick info about unions,
employers, "occupational health" practitioners,
and qualification for UCB, I need a place to stay 
immediately.  Can anyone help?  Any help would be 
appreciated.  I  need a lawyer.  I need mittens, a 
coat, a scarf, a watch, and several other items.  
Friends at last would be nice as well.  I need the 
chance to get back on my feet rapidly.  Perhaps 
someone or some group might like to sponsor my 
writing the story of this travail which should 
never exist in, of all places, the United States, 
nor be engendered by, of all institutions, a 
university, and result in, of all forms of harm, 
an open season on depravity toward women, which, 
of all professions, physicians should not be 
abetting. 

This is sincere, is urgent, is about a life worthy
of rescue.

Please help.  

>
> Throughout, I've lived - am living - a reversion 
> to pre-1940s failure of social safety nets, where
> petty human depravity will seep in all over 
> during the plummet to subsistence vacuum. 
>
> Can/should I go to my union membership (any union 
> membership) with this for immediate support I 
> need and loneliness assistance? 
>
>   My union is http://www.hereunion.org/
>   This is a large union. I'm in a populous
>   area.  I would meet (hey, at Starbucks) 
>   with anyone interested in helping. 
>   There's not a stitch of help I don't
>   need. 
>